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DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

arstechnica.com

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Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#101

Post by pdabbadabba »

Narhem wrote: post #97
ziddoap wrote: post #4

> DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims. Wow, that's brave. Create a wrapper around ChatGPT, call it a lawyer, and never check the output. $193k fine seems like peanuts. Sometimes I think about where I would be in life if I had no moral or ethical qualms. I'd probably be running a company like this.

Crazy people take any advice from people without citing the exact legal clause.

Then you must find it very frustrating to actually receive legal advice, because it is often more complicated than that and there sometimes is no such clause!

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#102

Post by winddude »

'''"None of the Service’s technologies has been trained on a comprehensive and current corpus of federal and state laws, regulations, and judicial decisions or on the application of those laws to fact patterns," the FTC found'''

Wow!! That seems so simple, and literally a few weeks to do in today's ecosystem, now thoroughly testing make take a little more time, but wow, I wonder if it was evening attempting to do RAG.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#103

Post by mrguyorama »

robertlagrant wrote: post #94
LegitShady wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when the government regulates it. until then it will continue to the end of time.

There are already laws for false advertising.

In America? Barely. EVERYTHING can be called "puffery", which apparently makes it perfectly legal to make outright lies about your product, and if you instead merely pay someone who makes outright lies, apparently that's fine too if you didn't explicitly tell them to make those specific lies!

In America, it is legal to call your uncarbonated soft drink "vitamin water"!

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#104

Post by szundi »

zahlman wrote: post #72
Aurornis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it used to be pretty positively received on HN I think people love the idea of DoNotPay: A magical internet machine that saves people money and fights back against evil corporations. Before ChatGPT they were basically mad libs for finding and filling out the right form. Helpful for people who couldn't figure out how to navigate situations by themselves. There is real value in this. However, they've also been runnin…

>they're just another startup playing the growth hacking game When is humanity going to start seeing some patches against these exploits? Is common sense still in beta?

Human lifespan is too short

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#105

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #75
gradyfps wrote: post #7

"In 2021, Browder reported that DoNotPay had 250K subscribers; in May 2023, Browder said that DoNotPay had “well over 200,000 subscribers”. To date, DoNotPay has resolved over 2 million cases and offers over 200 use cases on its website. Though DoNotPay has not disclosed its revenue, it charges $36 every two months. Given this, it can be estimated that DoNotPay is generating $54 million in annual revenue, assuming th…

This is founder-raising-funds math (or VC looking for liquidity math). 200k subscribers might not mean paid subs and it certainly doesn't mean 1-year of paid subs. This could be $9M (a single-month of 250 paid subs) or lower.

Their point still stands though. If the output should be reviewed by a lawyer, then the penalty should be all the profits (and maybe also the wages of the CEO) to deter others from doing the same, and ensure that they don't continue in the belief that an occasional 1-2% is perfectly acceptable 'cost of doing business'.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#107

Post by gortok »

sixhobbits wrote: post #6
ziddoap wrote: post #4

> DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims. Wow, that's brave. Create a wrapper around ChatGPT, call it a lawyer, and never check the output. $193k fine seems like peanuts. Sometimes I think about where I would be in life if I had no moral or ethical qualms. I'd probably be running a company like this.

DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289

> it used to be pretty positively received on HN

Doesn’t that call into question the decision making of folks on HN rather than being a positive view of the product?

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#108

Post by mgraczyk »

gradyfps wrote: post #7

"In 2021, Browder reported that DoNotPay had 250K subscribers; in May 2023, Browder said that DoNotPay had “well over 200,000 subscribers”. To date, DoNotPay has resolved over 2 million cases and offers over 200 use cases on its website. Though DoNotPay has not disclosed its revenue, it charges $36 every two months. Given this, it can be estimated that DoNotPay is generating $54 million in annual revenue, assuming th…

The main product actually works, this is for additional claims that were misleading. It isn't right to compare the settlement to the entire company revenue. Better to compare to the benefit gained by wrongdoing, or the amount of harm caused.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#110

Post by bell-cot »

glial wrote: post #84
zahlman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're just another startup playing the growth hacking game When is humanity going to start seeing some patches against these exploits? Is common sense still in beta?

Ideally the legal system wouldn't be byzantine and prohibitively expensive for mere mortals to engage with.

Too bad that the legal system is made of lawyers, whose interests run directly contrary to that ideal.
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